I think my son just levelled up. If I’m perfectly honest, he’s only really had two main leisure pursuits until now: staring at lightbulbs and manically woodpeckering away at my wife’s nipples, often while screaming. But now his horizons are expanding. At four months old, he’s become entirely captivated by everything.
This includes the television, and that’s a problem. Of course, it’s likely that when he swung his head around and gawped intently at a recent episode of Game of Thrones, he was simply distracted by all the colours and noises. Then again, it’s not entirely unreasonable to assume that the contents of the programme have now permanently imprinted on his young brain, dooming him to a thankless life as a bloodthirsty despot with a number of profound entitlement problems. I guess only time will tell.
So, instead, we’ve decided to take this opportunity to instil a love of books in him. Because that’s what all the developmental guides say that you’re supposed to do at his age. Instil a love of books in him, even though he’s a child born in the year 2015 and the printed word will play such a massively reduced role in his life that we’d probably do just as well to instil him with a love of Tamagotchis or fax machines.
Long story short, I’ve started to read to my son. In time, I suspect that this will become second nature to us both. But for now, it’s hard to see the process as anything other than slightly pointless. Because, as far as he’s concerned, I’m not actually reading to him at all. From his perspective, all I’m doing is holding up a series of abstract shapes and making a load of dumb-sounding blee-blur noises. Realistically, he’d be just as entertained if I span an umbrella around and complained about my job.
Perhaps my choice of book isn’t helping things. The first one I read to him was Goodnight Moon, an apparent classic that had nevertheless managed to pass me by during my childhood. On the surface it looked fine – bright, colourful, not too wordy, maybe even a bit Where’s Wallyish – but then I started to read it, and the blood immediately froze in my veins.
Because, dear lord, Goodnight Moon is a creepy book. If you’ve never read it, everything takes place in a weirdly stilted room that – although never made explicit – probably stinks to high heaven of formaldehyde. In the corner of the room is a dead rabbit. Now, the rabbit might be stuffed, or it might have just been killed in its chair and abandoned, but it is unquestionably dead. In this room, a younger rabbit goes around obsessively saying goodbye to everything around it – socks, combs, sinister bowls of nondescript mush – in a manner that suggests it never intends to wake up again.
The whole thing has such an unmistakeable air of murder-suicide about it – at one point the younger rabbit even says “Goodnight, nobody”, which is easily the most upsetting thing I’ve ever seen written in any book – that the whole thing seems like an intensely misjudged novelisation of Michael Haneke’s The Seventh Continent.
However, we laboured through and, to my utter surprise, the baby loved it. He squealed. He scanned each page for details. He reached out to pat the images with his hand. So, from what I’m able to discern, one of two things is happening. Either I’m completely unable to tell if a book is appealing to children or not, or my son has got a really unpleasant taste in fiction. Again, I guess only time will tell.
